death in 1841. Julia Tayloe died on July 4, 1846. Tayloe married Phoebe Warren on April 17, 1849. The House was the scene of a murder in 1859. Philip Barton Key II was the son of Francis Scott Key and the nephew of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In the spring of 1858, Key began having an affair with Teresa Bagioli Sickles, the wife of his friend Daniel Sickles. On February 26, 1859, Sickles learned of the affair. The following day, he saw Key in Lafayette Square signalling to his wife. Sickles rushed out into the park, drew a single pistol, and shot the unarmed Key three times while the other man pleaded for his life. Key was taken into the nearby Tayloe House and died moments later. Key's spirit, eyewitnesses and authors claim, now haunts Lafayette Square and can be seen on dark nights near the spot where he was shot. The Tayloe house became a noted meeting place for many of the leading political figures of early 19th-century American politics. Tayloe was one of the most influential and active members of the Whig Party in the District of Columbia. Among the many frequent visitors to the house were Chief Justice John Marshall, Senator and Secretary of State Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Vice President and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, Senator Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Lewis Cass, Secretary of State Edward Livingston, Speaker of the House and Senator Robert Charles Winthrop, General Winfield Scott, Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett, Senator and Secretary of State William H. Seward, Associate Justice Joseph Story, and many others. Presidents John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore also were frequent guests. Anthony Trollope spent much of his free time being entertained by the Tayloes at their home during his visit to Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1862. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe died on February 28, 1868, and Phoebe Tayloe inherited the house. After she died in 1881, more than 200 marble statues, bronze sculptures, items of fine furniture, and paintings in the house were donated to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Phoebe Warren Tayloe's niece, Elizabeth H. Price, inherited the house in 1882. In April 1885, the Cosmos Club considered purchasing the house from the Tayloe family. The influential club already owned most of the block